PY 101 Final Exam (Dobias)
Your uncle tells you about an interesting magazine article explaining that humans use 10 percent of their brains. As a student of psychology, your response should be:
"Well, research actually shows that almost all of the brain is continually active."
This correlation has the strongest predictive value
-0.75
The median is better than the mean as a measure of central tendency for this distribution.
3; 4; 12; 86
The neurotransmitter most likely to be found in the synaptic cleft between a motor neuron and a muscle
Acetylcholine
Which part of the brain relays information between the spinal cord and the cerebellum?
Brainstem
A function most directly controlled by the brainstem.
Breathing
After surgery to control epilepsy, Miguel could understand people but lost his ability to speak. It is most likely that the surgery impacted his
Broca's area
The most appropriate research method for exploring whether childhood emotional abuse predicts higher levels of adult depression
Correlational research
Who is best described as a structuralist?
Edward Titchener
What is a mainstream psychologist most likely to think about Sigmund Freud?
Freudian theory is untestable and not grounded in science.
This perspective argues that human behavior develops in certain ways because it serves a useful purpose
Functionalism
Would produce a nearly normal distribution
Heights of all adult men in America
On which of the following points would Plato and Descartes likely have agreed?
Knowledge does not rely on our fallible senses
If a doctor stimulated your occipital lobe, which would you be most likely to experience?
Lights and colors
___________ taught at Wellesley College for more than 30 years and was the first woman president of the American Psychological Association.
Mary Whiton Calkins
Among the various touch receptors, _______ have a role in sensing touch and _______ have a role in sensing vibration.
Merkel's discs , Pacinian corpuscles
Accurate statement about neurotransmitters
Neurotransmitters bind to receptors on the membrane of the postsynaptic neuron
Which accurately reflects the path of information flow that takes place when child jerks his hang away from a hot pan?
Sensory neurons --> spinal interneurons --> motor neurons
How to best differentiate structuralism from functionalism
Structuralism asked what happens when an organism does something, while functionalism asked how and why
This is true about the strength of a correlation
The closer a correlation is to 0.00, the weaker the relationship
Image of left and right eye and optic nerve. What does this figure demonstrate?
The left visual cortex receives information about what we see in the right half of the visual field.
You accept a job selling high-end knives door-to-door on commission because you were informed that company employees, on average, earn $60,000 a year. After three months of making less than $1,000 a month, you learn that most other salespeople are making less than $20,000 a year. If the company has 20 sales people, two managers, and one president, how can the company's claim still be correct?
The mean of all salaries is $60,000 because the managers and president earn huge salaries
Most accurate statement about vesicles
They empty neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft
Why would you feel pain when placing your hand on both a hot and a cold pipe at the same time?
Touch receptors are reporting the sensations of heat and cold, but the brain combines the two and perceives pain
A research team is investigating the impact of stereotypes on performance. In one group, women read an article about why the structure of men's brains makes them better at math. In the second group, women read an article saying there are no biological differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women. Then all women in the study take a challenging math test. Researchers time the test and score the number of items women answered correctly. In this study, which of the following is the independent variable?
Which article the women read
........ is often credited with establishing the first psychological laboratory, thus establishing psychology as an experimental science.
Wilhelm Wundt
________ was an early proponent of functionalism
William James
A meta-analysis is
a combination of results from many related studies
Neuropathic pain is caused by
a damaged of malfunctioning nervous system
A hypothesis is
a testable prediction about the relationship between variables
Myelinated axons are useful because they
allow action potentials to travel more quickly
Cici is trying to overcome her heroin addiction. She takes a daily medication that keeps her from getting high, even if she uses heroin. This medication is most likely
an endorphin antagonist
Neurons are more likely to fire when they
are depolarized
John Watson, Ivan Pavlov, and B.F. Skinner would have agreed that psychology is the study of
behavior
The main difference between binocular and monocular depth cues is that
binocular cues require information from both eyes, while monocular cues do not
The Jennifer-John study examining bias against female applicants for a science job suggests that
both men and women are biased against female applicants
A neuron's refractory phase is defined as the
brief period during and immediately after an action potential when a neuron cannot produce another action potential
Excitatory synapses
bring neurons closer to the firing threshold
To better understand aggressive behavior toward strangers, a psychologist gathers all available information about a man who threatened random people in a mall with an automatic weapon. This is an example of
case study research
Neurotransmitters influence the polarization of a neuron by
causing receptor channels to open, allowing charged sodium ions to flow into the neuron
The voltage difference across a neuron's membrane
changes frequently
In the retina of the human eye, most ________ are concentrated in or near the _______
cones , fovea
Giving a person a drug very similar in molecular shape to GABA would likely result in
decreased neural activity
The numerals 1, 2, 3, and 4 refer to ________ respectively.
dendrites, cell body, axon, and axon terminals.
In an experiment, the variable that is expected to differ across the experimental and control groups in the _______ variable
dependent
In a depression-treatment study, neither the participants nor the researcher know who is taking medication and who is taking a sugar pill. This is an example of a
double-blind trial
Debi just ran a marathon in less than four hours and felt no pain during the run. Her lack of pain was most likely due to
endorphins
A research team wants to know if sugar consumption is related to hyperactivity. Researchers give fifty children cupcakes made with real sugar and another fifty children cupcakes made with zero-calorie sugar substitutes. They then observe each child individually to assess his or her level of activity after eating the cupcakes. This is an example of
experimental research
Parents who agree with John Locke's notion of tabula rasa would most likely
expose their children to a rich variety of sensory experiences
Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark found that doll tests
exposed internalized racism in African-American children, particularly among children attending segregated schools
The motor cortex is located in the ______ lobe of the brain
frontal
Inhibitory synapses
hyperpolarize neurons
In an experiment, the variable manipulated by the researcher is the ________ variable.
independent
The primary type of neuron in neural networks is a
interneuron
In a psychology experiment, subjects listen to a variety of tones presented at different frequencies and then reflect on the experience, describing what they heard as precisely as possible. These individuals would have been using a process called
introspection
A recent study found that married people are less likely to have personality disorders than unmarried people. The news reporter covering the study advised people to get married to improve their personalities. You know this recommendation is not warranted because
it is possible that personality disorders keep people from marrying
The brainstem consists of the
midbrain, pons and medulla
Occlusion is a _______ depth cue
monocular
Messages from the central nervous system are carried to muscles by
motor neurons
The three main functional types of neurons are
motor, sensory, and interneurons
A woman with a disease that has damaged her dopamine receptors is most likely to experience
movement abnormalities
A manager at a science museum wants to identify the most popular exhibits, so once every hour for six weeks she has volunteers count the number of people standing in front of each exhibit. This is an example of
naturalistic observation
You would expect your pupil to be largest when you are
navigating through a dark forest at night.
Otto Loewi electrically stimulated a nerve in a frog heart. He then applied fluid surrounding the heart to a second heart. In this experiment, he found evidence that
neurons communicate chemically
The study of the nervous system is called
neuroscience
A patient has a dangerously low heart rate and is having difficulty breathing. The neurotransmitter that would be most helpful to him is
norepinephrine
Your brain's _______ lobe is most involved in allowing you to feel an annoying pebble in your shoe
parietal
White matter refers to
parts of the brain filled with myelinated axons
To learn more about the gaming habits of teenage boys, a professor randomly selected fifty boys from various high schools for a video game study. In this study, "all teenage boys" make up the
population
Reliability refers to whether your measurement tool _________ and validity to whether it ________.
produces repeatable results , measures what it is supposed to measure
Ethical principles require researchers to
provide information about potential risks to participants before they begin a study
What are the three Rs set forth by scientist in the '60s (be sure to explain each one)? What two types of testing are used as examples of the positive effects of implementing the three Rs?
reduction, replacement and refinement LD50 and LD80
In Plato's cave allegory, a prisoner was temporarily unchained and allowed to see the fire at the mouth of the cave. When he returned to the chains, the other prisoners
refused to believe him
A sensory code is a
relationship between stimuli and the action potentials they produce in sensory cells
Psychologist Margaret Floy Washburn is best known for he work on the
relationships between humans and animal behaviors
A measure of conscientiousness produces very similar scores each time a person repeats the exercise, but it doesn't predict whether a person is reliable in everyday life. This measure appears to be
reliable but not valid
Compared to experimental research, survey research is limited because it
relies more on the honesty and accurate memories of participants
The Tuskegee syphilis study is famous because
researchers failed to inform participants that they had a treatable disease
Sensory information from the left side of the body is processed in the _______ and mapped onto the cortex
right hemisphere
If heavy snowfall in Alaska has a correlation of -0.78 with the consumption of ice cream and a correlation of +0.78 with the sale of boots, you can predict that for a snowy January in Alaska, the store will
sell more boots and ice cream sales will be lower
Detection of the sound of a bell ringing is referred to as a _________. Once you interpret the stimulus as the sound of your alarm clock, it is referred to as a __________.
sensation , perception
When you scrape your knee, pain is relayed from your knee to your central nervous system by
sensory neurons
Results from a recent experiment are consistent with a researcher's expectation that exposing people to unfamiliar groups reduces prejudice. This means that the researcher
should retain her hypothesis for now.
Dopamine is most directly involved in
signaling pleasure
The peripheral nervous system is divided into the _______ nervous system and the _______ nervous system
somatic , autonomic
You are home alone when you hear strange noises in your house. This causes your _______ system to trigger your heart to race
sympathetic nervous
The idea that children are born with no knowledge or "content" whatsoever and are "filled" by life experience is called
tabula rase
Scientists use laboratory experiments primarily to
test cause-and-effect relationships
Action potentials travel at speeds
that differ from one neuron to another
During an action potential
the inside of a neuron's axon becomes more positively charged than the outside
Psychology is best defined as the study of
the mind and behavior
In an experiment treating spider phobia, half of the participants get eight hours of cognitive-behavioral treatment. The other half get eight hours of attention from a therapist but no active treatment. Both groups report a statistically significant reduction in their fear of spiders. This is evidence that
the placebo effect can be significant
The reason that we have blind spots in our visual fields is that
there are no photoreceptors on the optic disc
The corpus callous is directly responsible for
transferring information between the left and right hemispheres
What event occurs first during an action potential?
voltage gated sodium channels open
According to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato
we cannot necessarily rely on our senses to learn the truth
The visual field is
what we can see without moving our eyes
Research has shown that social exclusion activates the same brain regions as physical pain. A researcher wants to test the hypothesis that over-the-counter pain relievers will also reduce the pain of social exclusion. She gives half of her participants ibuprofen and half a placebo, has them play a game in which other players ignore them, and then measures their level of distress. In this study .......... is the independent variable and ........ is the dependent variable.
whether people take ibuprofen , distress
A _______ would reflect light of all colors
white shirt
Size constancy refers to
your perception that an object remains the same size, even as you get closer or farther away